It will be 48 years since the outbreak of the Soweto June 16 students’ revolt against Bantu Education and the apartheid government’s imposition of Afrikaans down the throats of African schoolchildren.
The language question and the despised Bantu Education served as metaphors for the general discontentment Africans had against apartheid and the colonial system imposed on them by the white establishment.
Sixteen-years earlier on March 21, 1960, the anti-pass laws protesters had a protest march for justice and equity quelled by the apartheid guns that killed 69 people and causing injury to more than 200 demonstrators in what would be known as the Sharpeville Massacre.
The act of barbaric violence roundly meted out by the apartheid regime was condemned by the international community, including the United Nation, which six years after the massacre declared the day as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The killing of so many people amounted to violation of human rights, including the right to life, freedom of speech and assembly and the right to be free from harsh treatment, so argued the international body.
The violence against students triggered a harsh judgment against the repressive regime. The UN reaffirmed that “the poli-cy of apartheid was a crime against conscience and dignity of mankind and seriously disturbs international peace and security”.
Also, the UN’s General Assembly passed a resolution condemning apartheid as a crime against humanity.
Significantly, when the students’ revolt erupted in 1976, both the ANC and PAC had been banned, with the country lacking a genuine voice to represent the aspirations of the African people.
The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) of the late 1960s and 1970s, kept the political home fires burning, inspired by Stephen Bantu Biko and the students’ body which he led, the South African Students Organisation (Saso), of which he was a founding member.
By 1977, a year after the students’ revolt, all BCM formations had been hounded down by the special branch of the then South African Police, its leading lights jailed or banned under the provisions of the draconian Internal Security Amendment Act.
The country, on September 12, 1977, was immersed in a dark cloud in which its beloved leader, Biko, died after being cruelly assaulted by the apartheid police officers.
During that period, collaborators of the system, including Bantustan leaders, were projected by the regime as genuine black leaders, yet that was not how they were perceived by the majority.
A nation-wide crescendo of calls was for the release of “our genuine leaders”, which included Nelson Mandela, with many South Africans distancing themselves from the farce that Bantustan leadership turned out to be – puppets of the apartheid system.
This is to locate why students took it upon themselves to give political direction on issues the nation felt strongly about – and inferior education through
Bantu Education was such a matter of grave concern.
The bigger question that has become a bone of contention is: Was it worth it? Were those sacrifices, which led to the death of many young people, worth the price?
The revolt by the youthful cohort of the 1976 revolutionaries became the catalyst to intensify the struggle, which became necessary because of the brutal nature of the apartheid system.
If we ponder the brutal manner in which Biko died. If we think of the beating he suffered and how he was thrown into the back of a van like a sack of maize meal, naked and driven from Gqeberha to Pretoria, a distance of more than 1 000km with a cracked skull and damaged brain. All these things must make us squirm and want to join a -revolution for justice.
There were Vlakplaas human rights violations between 1979 and 1994, the death squad operations under the leadership of apartheid ministers Adriaan Vlok and General Magnus Malan in which opponents of apartheid were brutally killed, with evil men such as Eugene de Kock at the helm of the killing machine, with some of his victims fed to crocodiles while the killers enjoyed a braai.
The 1976 revolutionaries waged their battle against the cruel system to close the leadership vacuum left by the ANC, PAC and BCM leaders languishing in apartheid jails.
South Africa will forever owe those young leaders a debt of gratitude.
- Mdhlela is a freelance journalist, an Anglican priest, an ex-trade unionist and former editor of the South African Human Rights Commission journals
